BuzzTart

We made the decision several years ago that all content coming into Swayve Newsrooms would be quality controlled. That decision is now paying off, with Google’s continuing algorithm tweaks.

What the new order of Google means is that websites that publish volumes of low quality content — that is,  content that is written around key words rather than real news, or at least new information — are downgraded in search results.  Some websites have disappeared entirely.

To ensure this doesn’t happen to our press release services, we moderate all releases that come in to make sure they’re of a standard that meets the demands of Australian journalists. And of course we also try to make sure they don’t contain any defamatory or offensive material – although we don’t stand in judgment and we do try to be nonpartisan.   Not all topics will interest everyone but our customers share a common goal — to reach media outlets and social media with high quality content of interest to niche audiences.

As Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales told Fortune magazine recently, there are only two ways to get good, quality content. To paraphrase Jimmy:   One way is that you are already a good writer so you write it yourself or you pay a professional PR person or a journalist to write it for you. The second way is to have a product, service or intangible communication that gets other people excited – and they write it for you, free of charge.

You can tell a mile off if a person is truly excited and interested about what they’re saying — it’s part of the positive fallout of social media that it is very very difficult to pretend to be someone you’re not in any kind of sustainable way.

how to write a press release, public relations

Rick Carter of enova digital has been talking up the renaissance of QRCodes for a while and now I’m convinced. I even made my own, ridiculously easy. This is just a toe in the water, will move to bigger and better things.

free marketing

Have you ever received an invitation to one of those “FREE Publicity”  workshops?  One lobbed in my inbox today: “Never pay an expensive PR agency again!” was the headline.

I’m sure the promoter means well – to teach small business and solo operators how to generate their own publicity is a noble task. But why the need to decry the work of professional PR people? This kind of blanket statement just irks me.  There is NO WAY to “do your own PR” without working on it – there are no shortcuts, despite the promises.  More often than not, it will work out cheaper in the long run if you let a professional run the show.  Would you ask your gardener to fix your plumbing?  It pays to employ the right person for the right job.

Implying that the PR agency is duping you by charging for their services is flawed and a reflection of last-century thinking.   You see, anyone can get a story in the paper once or even twice, but PR people do it over and over and over again across all media distribution channels.  They succeed because they are trained to give journalists and news consumers what they need, and many are gifted writers and speakers.

This promotion also claimed you don’t need a “media hook”. Huh?   journalists use hooks in every story they publish to capture readers, listeners and viewers.  What you need, if you plan to entice a journalist to talk about your wonderfulness, is a story.   Or as Glen Frost from In the Public Interest says in Top 20 Trends for PR Practitioners 2011, you need to ‘drive the narrative’.

If you are a small business owner who has the skills, time, energy and patience to do this, I admire and support you, as any PR professional would!

press release, public relations

Businesses and nonprofits have thrown themselves behind the Queensland and Victorian flood support efforts.  They range from electricians to bird sanctuaries, bedding manufacturers to counselling for flood-stricken Australians.  Here are just a handful of the organisations using social networks to let people know they are ready to help.

LJ Hooker drives relief for flood victims
LJ Hooker Ltd established network-wide initiatives in response to the devastating floods first hitting Queensland and now other states.“

ALTV

I don’t want to get snarky, but sometimes I wonder if anyone is bothering to teach grammar and punctuation in Australian schools.  As I run a press release service, I often have to reject copy because of errors that could have been averted by spelling and grammar checking.  If I published it, I would be risking my own business reputation and the reputation of the company or individual concerned.   Yet I thought it was well known that when you publish content online, it could appear anywhere else on the web.  If this content is related to your business, such as a press release, how does it reflect on your brand when it’s littered with grammatical and spelling errors?  It’s really easy to solve this – just proofread, and if you don’t know the correct way to do it, ask someone who does.

Here are some common errors and the correct usage:

1.  In quotation marks, a comma or fullstop should be inserted before the closing quotation mark:  “I don’t know where to put the comma so I just leave it out,” she said. She said: “Put the fullstop inside the last quotation mark if it is at the end of the sentence.”  A comma may be placed outside the closing quote marks if it’s a “partial quote”, such as this one.

2.   A quotation should not contain several sentences before the reader know who’s speaking. Attribute  quotations as soon as you can, typically after the first phrase or sentence. “Each press release should begin with a summary of the main newsworthy issue,” she said. “Usually it answers the questions ‘who, what, where, when and why’.”

3.  Using single quotation marks instead of double is another common error; this will just annoy the journalist — as will capitalised headlines. Have you ever seen single quotation marks or capped headlines in a newspaper? Single quotation marks are used only where needed within double quotation marks. For an example see the last sentence of (2) above.

4.  Spelling mistakes; there is a massive incidence of wrongly spelled words. Instead of showing you the misspelled words, here are some correct spellings –

• “confectionery”(there’s no ‘a’)
• “stationary” (still) but “stationery” (paper, envelopes, etc)
• its = the possessive (its claws were sharp); it’s = it is (it’s well known that….the apostrophe stands for the “i” in the contraction of it is)
• hassle not “hassell” (which I think is an architectural firm)
• minuscule (it comes from the Latin ‘minus’ and not mini)

Sorry for the rant but I have much more where that came from. By the way, I have highlighted the fact that this phenomenon is Australian. Press releases from American companies seem to be written with care – in the US it is just not acceptable to send out poorly constructed corporate documents.  Editors are employed as a matter of course before distribution of releases and marketing collateral.  Press releases written by people for whom English is not the first language may be excused to some degree.

citizen journalism, free PR, free publicity, how to write a press release

IN the early hours of a Sunday morning, while Acting Premier of South Australia, Treasurer Kevin Foley was reportedly ‘king hit’ by an unknown male, for no known reason. Mr Foley says that he was seeking one of Adelaide’s “elusive taxis” before the incident.

We asked several PR professionals to provide their best advice as to how Mr Foley should handle his communication with the press regarding this painful and no doubt embarrassing event.

See one version of the story here:

http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/foley-incident-a-wakeup-call-xenophon-20101130-18efp.html

This is a collated version of the response from Andrew Tobin, head of PR at Mad Australia Productions:

“The first step is to find out the real story. Was Mr Foley involved in any behaviour that could be construed as embarrassing? Might he have been assaulted by a jealous boyfriend or husband? Was he under the influence of legal or illegal recreational drugs? These are the questions that media will ask and they have to be answered.

For the purpose of this exercise, let’s say the answer to all those questions was “no”.

Let’s assume Mr Foley was simply looking for an elusive taxi at an ungodly hour. The first thing I’d do is check with all the taxi companies and find out what the wait was for a taxi at that time as well as the number of taxis on the road at the time. The check would, of course, be made anonymously and if the numbers support Mr Foley’s claim, the information would be made public and if they didn’t then I’d let it slide. I’d also establish whether or not Mr Foley used his mobile telephone to call for a taxi. What time? What was he told? Is there a recording of the conversation? The answers to those questions would determine the nature of the advice.

An important question for Mr Foley. Did he know his attacker or did the attacker say anything to identify himself? Again, let’s say no.

In the final bit of detective work, I’d find out how bad the assault was. Was an ambulance called? Did Mr Foley seek medical help? What was the medical assessment?

Again, let’s assume “no”, “yes” and “mild”.

Given the scenario described above I’d advise Mr Foley to play it cool.

“My first priority is to let the police do their job. This State deserves to be proud of the men and women in uniform and I’m confident the systems we have in place will work.

“On a personal note I’d like to say that what hurt me more than the cowardly king hit was any damage this might have done to the reputation of this State. In an ideal world anyone should be able to walk down any street in Adelaide at any hour without fear of being assaulted. I would now like to step back and take the necessary time to recover and let the police do their work.

“Like any other citizen of this great State, I have made a report to the police and the matter is now in their hands. I ask you to let them do their job. Thank you for your concern.”

I would further advise Mr Foley to answer any questions in the most cursory manner. For example:

Q: “Mr Foley, what were you doing out at that hour?”

A: “I was looking for a taxi to take me home.”

Q: “Was it appropriate for a senior politician such as you to be out at such a late hour?”
A: “That’s a ridiculous question. It is perfectly appropriate for anyone to be anywhere at any time. I was not looking for trouble, I was looking for a taxi.”

Q: “Were you on a date?”

A: “I was out. I was trying to get home.”

Q: “What have you learned from the incident?”

A: “Sometimes bad things happen to innocent people.”

Q: “Has this incident ruined your chances of becoming Premier of this State?”

A: “I can only measure the past, I can’t predict the future. Ask me that question again in five years and I’ll be able to give you a complete answer.”

Lord knows we need errant politicians and eccentric celebrities or our papers would be empty, but was this good advice?  What would your advice be.

Cheers – and all the best for a pleasantly eventful 2011!

Leila

Adelaide, Australian politics

These are the tools I use every day – I included them in my last newsletter, but here they are again so you don’t need to search your email:

1.  Amplify – this is a new service that lets you share with all your social networks from one interface (incidentally, NewsMaker only shares manually as we want to make sure the right messages are delivered to the right place on your behalf).
2. Compete – measure your performance in terms of hits and popularity, against your rivals.
3. Addictomatic– introduced to me by the media-savvy Gerry McCusker, this is a tool that reveals what’s been said about your brand, all in one screen, in virtual real time.
4. Social Mention – one of my favourites, allows you track any brand or name and have measurement of its “strength, sentiment, passion and reach” – as the name implies, it includes mentions in social media.
5. Alexa – this is not a new tool but it certainly is one of the fastest and more reliable ways to measure your ranking against websites in your region and across the whole world wide web. It also shows you the top keywords people used to find your pages.

PS: NewsMaker will launch its new platform in 2011. We’ll be using Swayve® software (Sway for Influence and VE for visibility engine). As well as PR productivity tools for publishing and distribution, Swayve lets you track and report on the coverage from your media campaigns in both social and traditional media. Register at Swayve to find out more about our release date.

measuring ROI, public relations, social media, social media metrics, social media ROI

The Australian Festive Season is traditionally the time when all business goes quiet – only to wake up again on Australia Day. This period between Christmas and the end of January is a fertile time for PR professionals to be thinking about their clients’ media communications calendar for the whole year. It’s also a time when radio stations and metro dailies are crying out for topical stories.

Radio stations employ stand-in presenters during this period while newspapers and magazines often work with skeleton staff. They need ideas that are going to entertain, excite and inform.

Here are some surefire ways to increase awareness and attract media coverage from Christmas through to Australia Day.

1. Random acts of kindness
Many people are faced with personal and financial challenges at this time of year. Tell people about your charity or volunteer work and the difference you make*.

2. Trends and opinions
Tell media about your event and especially any anecdotes or strong opinions that were shared – or any trends you’ve noticed in holiday conversations. Include pics if you have them.

3. New Year sales and promotions
In January, everyone is looking for a bargain. Now’s the time to announce your special offers, deals and sales.

4. Run a competition or survey
While you have some thinking time, plan a competition with a prize suited to your customers. Surveys also work well in media – the larger the survey group the better but even small surveys work.

5. Good news week…
Are you looking forward to a prosperous New Year? Tell people about it – we all want to hear inspiring stories about business growth.

6. Take pictures and record video
Make 2011 the year when you capture everything you can as an image or video. The combination of text and video is the most powerful trend in media. Back it up by announcing your video’s existence in a news release so it will be shared widely.

7. Be bold or crazy
Do something mad, fun and not too dangerous…. Or play it safe and make bold predictions about the year ahead. As with point 6, record them on video as well as text to increase their pulling power.

* Join Donortec for great discounts on software and hardware for nonprofits.

Australian nonprofits; nonprofit technology, free marketing, free PR, free publicity, media, media release, press release, public relations, social marketing, social media

The avalanche of user generated content has made it more important that ever for marketers to get closer to their PR departments, according to new research reported in the PRSA journal Public Relations Tactics.  A report from the CMO Club and PR firm Hill & Knowlton found that when PR and marketing departments developed joint campaigns with shared rewards, the company would be about 60% more likely to stay on-message. Otherwise, they would fall off the wagon and lose control of the message by about the same percentage.

Another study by PR firm Burston Marsteller said that opinionated bloggers were widening the gap between corporate marketing message and realisation, to about 69% (in the negative).  The BM report also said that “News releases are being reprinted extensively, which affects communicators’ strategies….the audience for news releases is no longer just the media, and their language should be adapted for everyone.”

ALTV

Cathy Allington, CEO of YouGROW CRM (pictured below) found out how a simple change of strategy in her PR campaign could have a huge impact on her business.  Here’s what Cathy says:

“My training years ago was as a journalist.  I wrote my own Press Release and distributed to my media contacts.  Not a single response. I used this same Press Release – with some editing tips from NewsMaker – and have had the most amazing response I have ever had.  We have been tweeted by major publications who never took any notice of us before; we have had responses from Venture Capitalists – who had never known about us before; we have had responses from all over the world – and from key Potential Partners.  I ran a search on youGROW CRM before NewsMaker sent this release out through their networks – we had around 2,000 sites.  Since we sent our release out through NewsMaker, the same search returns around 4,500 sites.

“We have been engaged in discussions for 2 years with a potential major partner, but were just dealing with one ‘champion’, who wanted the company to partner with us.  When it came to crunch time for THE meeting, I asked if the other key decision makers knew about us and the proposed plans.  He said ‘Cathy, you and youGROW are actually quite famous in our office.;  I asked why – it was because one of the key players had received our NewsMaker release.

What NewsMaker does, is put you on the radar for contacts and publications you would never have thought about. And at a fraction of the cost. All this for under $100??  I can’t imagine going through the traditional PR release avenue ever again.  Why would you?”

Cathy Allington, CEO of CRM innovator YouGROW

Thanks, Cathy! To find out more, visit the “How It Works” page.

ALTV